This invention relates generally to laboratory burner apparatus and, more particularly, to a laboratory burner apparatus including an ignition and flame monitoring control system.
Gas burners commonly known as bunsen burners are employed in many industrial and academic laboratory facilities. Typically, such burners constitute a vertically supported tube connected to a source of gas by a manual gas cock and having variable air supply openings for adjusting the gas and air mixture so as to provide an intensity hot flame. Ignition of the bunsen burner's flame is usually accomplished with either a match, a cigarette lighter or a manually operated sparking device. Because of the inconvenience associated with such forms of ignition, bunsen burner flames are often allowed to burn during significant periods of unattached non-use. In addition to obviously wasting fuel, such unattended operation is inherently dangerous. In the event of a flame outage, the continued release of gas from an unsupervised burner can create an obviously hazardous environment.
The object of this invention, therefore, is to provide an improved laboratory gas burner that eliminates disadvantages inherently associated with conventional bunsen burners.